Mental Flosshttp://mentalfloss.com/node/16181/atom.xml2015-03-31T22:07:59+00:00http://mentalfloss.com/article/16181/which-came-first-chicken-or-t-rex2007-04-13T12:57:35+00:002007-04-13T12:57:35+00:00Which came first, the chicken or the T-Rex?Randy

Okay, obviously the T-Rex. But as it turns out, they have much more in common than just a clever blog title. Genetic researchers have just announced that those clucking, egg-producing denizens of the barnyard that we until now thought of as relatively harmless, are actually related -- though rather distantly -- to the T-Rex. By studying proteins from a 68-million-year-old T-Rex bone, they were able to prove a direct link between the two species. Scientists have theorized for years that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but until now, had no tissue-based proof of it. Read more about the laboratorial nitty-gritty here, or if dino-chickens aren't your thing, check out a Robot Chicken.